On December 17, Starlink experienced an anomaly on satellite 35956, resulting in loss of communications with the vehicle at 418 km. The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects. SpaceX is coordinating with the Space Force and NASA to monitor the objects.
The satellite is largely intact, tumbling, and will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise within weeks. The satellite's current trajectory will place it below the ISS, posing no risk to the orbiting lab or its crew.
As the world’s largest satellite constellation operator, we are deeply committed to space safety. We take these events seriously. Our engineers are rapidly working to root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event.
Quite rare to see Starlink failure. I believe this specific satellite was launched on the 23rd of November with Group 11-30.
Yeah. The percentage will grow as the constellation gets larger and larger. Once they reach full operating capacity i assume that percentage will start to drop as they work out and fix any remaining bugs. Eventually leveling out with just day to day issues.
They’re saying the total percent chance of something going wrong with ANY of the many satellites goes up with more satellites. Not the percent chance for any one vehicle.
Starlink satellites are deorbited before they would start experiencing deterioration. They are only meant to be up there about 5 years.
This creates a whole different problem, of course. So it is not exactly a defense of their business model, which I think is worrying for all sorts of reason. It just means that they are intentionally removed from use before it hits that tail.
I can assure you they will experience the bathtub curve. No one in their right mind will deorbit satellites during the steady plateau if they're trying to run a profit.
No one in their right mind will deorbit satellites during the steady plateau if they're trying to run a profit.
I assume you just have no idea what you are talking about then. There is a limited amount of propellent that they constantly use to keep the satellite working. They know when that tank is getting near empty, and they know that there will be a window where, if they do not do a maneuver to perform a controlled deorbit, they will be unable to do so ever again for that device.
So far, they're saying they are committed to intentionally removing devices at their end of life, which is when the propellant is nearing exhaustion, not when it is completely gone or when the device fails or hits the atmosphere.
Absolute failure will be approximately linear with constellation size, so as the constellation grows absolute failure rate will increase.
On a longer timescale, experience grows and with it, reliability on a per-vehicle basis goes up as failures (increasing with constellation size) become apparent and are resolved on future revisions.
They increase as the number of active satellites increases and then decrease as the tech and processes mature.
The bathtub curve is a different thing. It shows that you should expect a product to either fail early on or not for ages and that it shouldn’t fail randomly in the middle of its life.
I think you have this backward. The total number of failure (absolute) will increase, but the failures as a portion of the whole will decrease in a vacuum. Increased experience with creating them, absent endemic issues in production, would make them have a lower chance of failure, not higher.
But whenever you increase the amount of them, more will fail even with that lower chance of failure just because there are more opportunities.
Starlink intentionally deorbits older satellites early to prevent end of life failures, so absent external factors they almost certainly will not suddenly have a massive increase in failure as a portion of the whole.
That said: this is assuming no external problems. Because they are in a constant cycle of replacement, things like lowering production standards could have a negative effect if that were to occur. There also is the potential that over time increased space debris could affect the chances of failure from impacts.
Why though? I can understand the frequency of occurrence increasing with the number of units deployed, but I don't understand why the percentage of units failing would increase.
Even if they didn't ramp up the rate of satellite production, just keeping it constant, you would still expect to see an increasing rate in the total number of failures as the total number of active units increases. It's a consequence of the shape of the bathtub curve itself that this failure rate will continue until product lifecycles begin to overlapping. It's like trying to paint a solid line with a bathtub shaped stamp.
"Errors in a system will likely rise as the system continues to expand, and then lower as the teams working on it get more data on what needs to be fixed to reduce error rates."
Truly a hyper-specific and not-general-at-all prediction that only an expert in that specific field could say with any amount of confidence.
Also, it’s not as if an aerospace engineering degree is all that exclusive. Not to mention the mountain of systems engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, etc. that fill out the field.
At this point the main qualification is $200k cash for tuition or the same in debt. If I was on board for $75k+ in additional debt I'd be an aeronautical engineer by training and certification not a systems engineer in title only.
Or be like me, sell your soul to the navy for a few years, not actually get to use anything from my degree that has anything to do with space, and now bide my time in an unrelated field until I can go back and get a PhD because I still love the idea of learning it all. It’s zero debt, but I’m pretty sure my lifespan was shortened by a few years.
I did the same, 6 years in the Navy. Got my masters in nuclear engineering and I have worked as a mechanical engineer for 12 years. Found out last year I have cancer in my late 30s, even the VA figures the Navy gave it to me, that 100% was the quickest easiest VA claim I've ever made.
It's just a the law of large numbers instance but with failure rates The larger your sample size the more likely it will represent whatever failure rate star link is publicly (or privately) is projecting, and that's ignoring that the older equipment gets the more prone to failure it (generally) is when it can't be maintained due to being in space. This is just statistics in action, it's not rocket science.
IDK why people are acting like this is unprecedented or crazy like we haven't had space shuttles blow up during launch because of confidence levels being too low on testing and analysis on a gasket.
Eh the concept behind orbits and decay is pretty simple, basically just understanding the relationship between altitude and atmosphere density. The rest is just a high-level recognition that engineering and manufacture can improve with experience and iteration.
Note sure if you're seen them, but there are satellite visualization tools available, I like https://satellitemap.space/ myself. These tools do highlight that there certainly are a lot of satellites in orbit!
This would still apply here. I dont know exactly spacex's design criteria, but whatever statistical basis they are design to will be over that very limited life span.
Make enough parts and you will eventually get the one with -4 or -5 sigma material properties and it may fail prematurely
I am not saying that they are not degrading, lol. What I am saying is that they are designed for 5 years lifespan (with similar orbit decay) and first launch was like 6 years ago. There is no "piling up" because oldest sattelites should be already decaying in atmosphere.
As they are in a lower orbit their decay is expected. As it is expected I can imagine the engineers had a definite planned lifespan for them that is shorter than most. Shorter lifespan and a planned obsolescence/need to replace the expiring satellites leads to less important factor of safety?
Does this sound more like a system or equipment failure or more like a meteor strike. From the description it sounds to me like what would happen if you poked a hole in the thing.
Space debris is much more likely than meteors. The damage description sounds like it's compatible with both impact and internal failure. We would expect most impact events to happen with operational satellites because (a) there are more and (b) they are at higher altitude where there is more debris. But that doesn't mean you can't get unlucky with a new satellite at 418 km, of course.
Fair enough, just taking a guess at the internal/external problem question. It was the only reason I could come up with for a software update as a reaction to an external problem.
He will say something like “there’s a 30% chance it’s aliens”, because he likes being in the news and selling books and can’t be proven wrong when it invariably isn’t.
I mean, those things aren't mutually exclusive. Any debris too small to track is exactly that - not tracked, so we don't know how much small, fast-moving debris might have been ejected from an impact, whereas the larger components that can be tracked necessarily have a lower change in velocity after the collision because they have higher inertia.
That depends heavily on the meteor size. Meteor frequency is inversely correlated with size, i.e. there's far more millimeter sized objects than centimetre sized objects, and much more of those than anything large.
Thus the chance of being hit by something small enough to poke a hole and knock off some pieces in the process is significantly larger than the chance to be hit by something that utterly obliterates it.
It could have punched a tiny little hole and released a bunch of pressure that blew a few parts off too. The debris may have nothing to do with an impact.
Why would the Chinese break the space warfare taboo and commit an act of war against the United States in order to destroy a Starlink satellite with no value?
Because it’s a starling satellite with no value. It does that they can do it, but I’d also something insignificant enough that they know we won’t respond. We might not even admit that it’s what happened publicly.
How small an object is trackable? As they said the debris was trackable. Could hint at what occurred.
The tank was venting, so either it was struck or suffered an internal failure. Both of these would have resulted in debris.
Depending how accurately theyve been tracking it's path, should be able to know if it was struck first or not?
Hopefully those things have accelerometer logs. But if they lost comms I don't know if it's sending that all the time or if it needs "logging into" to check such low level info.
wonder if something hit it? like a little meteorite or something? apparently space debris can travel at quite a high rate of speed when they get in orbit for some time..
Given that the propulsion tank was pierced and a bunch of pieces blew off the satellite, it probably got whacked by a micrometeoroid traveling at a high relative velocity. It’s a hazard they really can’t avoid.
The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.
Was the satellite not in a circular orbit yet? Otherwise the "reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise within weeks" is doing some heavy lifting. At a 400km circular orbit "weeks" could be replaced with "many months"
It’s roughly circular, 418 x 429 km. The fact that it’s tumbling rather than in a low drag configuration should help it decay more quickly. I couldn’t find an independent estimate of decay time.
Starlinks are relatively light and have for their weight a large surface area when out of control, wouldn't be surprised if they do have significant enough drag that it reenters within half a year to a year max so "many months" seems like a very pessimistic estimate.
Your orbit doesn't stay circular when you vent a pressurized vessel. Unless by some infinitesimal chance the venting was perfectly perpendicular to the orbital plane throughout the event to cause a change to inclination instead of a change to the orbital period.
"the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects". Is that a convoluted way of saying "It blowed up! It blowed up real good!"?
I choose to believe that you meant "space squirrels" and "raccoons" separately, as in either a space squirrel or a regular ol' non-wpace raccoon. Just a trash panda from the Midwest somehow finding his way in front of a speeding satellite. RIP little guy.
I legitimately would be less surprised to see a report about a raccoon that found its way into or onto a spacecraft than I would be if I found out a human somehow made it.
If it was hit it was most likely hit by space debris on its whipple shield. The whipple shield is specifically designed to prevent a satellite blowing up real good in case of a hit. SpaceX stated it uses whipple shield in a filing with the FCC a few years ago.
I'm surprised though by "are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event." Space debris strikes are pretty rare events. There is no need to rush to deploy a software update. That makes me doubt it was a space debris hit.
Protections against an event don't have to mean protecting against it occurring. But instead can mean protections against the consequences of the event occurring.
For example, the house caught fire and burned down. The next house is being built with protections against fire.
That could mean protecting against the fire being able to start, protections against people becoming trapped, or protections against the fire spreading from one part to another.
They really didn't give any indication one way or another what happened. I think it's more likely an internal event but as outsiders we can't rule out external just yet.
Protections against losing comms is my thought. Or protection against not having any info after comms loss.
Eg perform a crash dump in the event X happens so we know wtf just happened.
Can't protect against debris with software, or a tank exploding and gutting the thing. But if it's got life for even seconds or fractions of a second even kB of info could be enough.
Yeah, wouldn't take many packets to just send the last 30 seconds of logs. The trick is making sure those packets make it somewhere. So if they can find a way to ensure they can either dump to ground or another satellite, that could help.
Yeah, there's no telling if their software update was to prevent whatever initiated the chain of events, something to stop the chain of events midway, or just better logging to understand what happened.
Sure, it's not wrong or anything, but it seems like a bit of an understatement when discussing the total loss of a spacecraft. A glitch with one system seems like a better use of the word than "the spacecraft blew up into pieces and is now reentering the atmosphere."
This is my favorite 'anomaly' example, that's the phrasing the announcer uses. As I said, it has a long use encompassing giant explosions and failures far bigger than the Starlink incident we're talking about. It's popular in part because it SOUNDS like no big deal, it SOUNDS cute and non-bombastic, but then... BOOM.
They say "anomaly" because it's a legally-defined word from FAA regulations.
14 CFR 401.7 states:
Anomaly means any condition during licensed or permitted activity that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected, during the verification or operation of a system, subsystem, process, facility, or support equipment.
Compared to:
Mishap means any event, or series of events associated with a licensed or permitted activity resulting in any of the following:
(1) A fatality or serious injury (as defined in 49 CFR 830.2);
(2) A malfunction of a safety-critical system;
(3) A failure of the licensee's or permittee's safety organization, safety operations, safety procedures;
(4) High risk, as determined by the FAA, of causing a serious or fatal injury to any space flight participant, crew, government astronaut, or member of the public;
(5) Substantial damage, as determined by the FAA, to property not associated with licensed or permitted activity;
(6) Unplanned substantial damage, as determined by the FAA, to property associated with licensed or permitted activity;
(7) Unplanned permanent loss of a launch or reentry vehicle during licensed activity or permitted activity;
(8) The impact of hazardous debris outside the planned landing site or designated hazard area; or
(9) Failure to complete a launch or reentry as planned as reported in § 450.213(b).
That could be it, or maybe a propellant tank exploded on its own. Sort of an Apollo 13 situation, although it was an oxygen tank in that case. Hard to say with what little we know.
Unfortunately, especially in the current political climate, space cooperation is going down, not up. Freaking depressing, as I can't rule out it becoming a battlefield in the near future. We may not see troops up there, but it doesn't take much to knock things down from there anymore. Especially vulnerable low earth constellations.
The advantage of Starlink is that at its low orbit, any debris will clean up within weeks. It will not bring about Kessler Syndrome as some commenters like to say each time there is a Starlink mishap.
Starlink satellites operate in a very low orbit, meaning they will all de-orbit in time. None of the starlink sats in space right now will be there in ~6 years. Starlink has to, and does, keep sending up more sats.
The fact this one failed and is only a few weeks from de-orbit means either 1) This sat was near the end of its lifetime anyway, or 2) The anomaly caused propulsion that decayed the orbit rapidly.
This one was at the start of it's lifetime, thus not 1), and it did not experience significant propulsion from the anomaly, thus not 2).
It is, in fact, 3) the sat was at the start of it's lifespan and was still climbing up to it's final orbit. The anomaly caused a *lack* of propulsion which leaves it at a low altitude and thus will experience fast decay.
Satellites are quite literally moving fast. Things broke on this one. It’s a joke. Starship iterations are very similar to the “move fast and break things” attitude. I accept your rebuttal, and acknowledge that everything SpaceX puts into orbit appears to be really well engineered, at least to a spectator like me.
Edit to add: rocket boosters landing on drone ships still feels like science fiction to me, and I still get excited when I think about how it’s basically how things work now.
I actually really wish we could retrieve that car, simply because I am incredibly curious what the materials look like. How does a standard car interior hold up to space for 7 years?
If I had to guess, incredibly poorly. I doubt it would be possible to even recover it without it breaking up. And by it I mean the whole car. Deep space is an extremely hostile environment.
see, these are my thoughts as well. Especially the materials that make up things like the dashboard. Offgassing and unshielded UV may have broken it down entirely. I wonder if there is some way we could reconnect to the cameras on board when it gets close enough next time.
On December 17, I—Cell 35956—experienced an anomalous internal misunderstanding. While minding my own business at a healthy 1.2 cm below the surface of the skin, I initiated an unscheduled growth initiative that resulted in a brief loss of centralized coordination. Some nutrients vented. Boundaries blurred. Growth accelerated.
This produced a modest reconfiguration of my semi-major axis (about 6 cm—totally normal when you’re expanding aggressively) and the gentle budding of a few low-velocity offspring. They’re small. Trackable.
I’m pleased to report I remain mostly intact, albeit tumbling—an expected side effect of unchecked proliferation.
Importantly, my trajectory keeps me beneath the vital organs, posing no risk to the brainstem or its inhabitants. I’m a rebel, not a monster. (I am not responsible for my offspring though lol)
As part of the body’s largest cellular collective, I want to stress how committed we are to overall health. We take anomalies like me very seriously—especially once they’re noticed. The organism’s immune engineers are already racing to identify my root cause and deploying new signaling protocols designed to make future spontaneous ambition less likely.
The tone of the starlink memo reminded me of an onion arricle about a thorn from a plant trying to spread its seed and take over the world, and cancer. I told ChatGPT to rewrite it in that satirical tone and framing then I fixed the parts ChatGPT didn't including the scales (it kept km instead of cm) it also tried to act like the cancer was more aligned than it is so I removed those bits and added my own.
Our engineers are rapidly working to root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event.
Can someone explain this to me? My interpretation of this is that they are both still trying to figure out what went wrong and they are pushing a software update to fix the problem. That is obviously incongruous.
In software I've worked on in the past, I've had cases where for example something gets an unexpected input from a sensor and then misbehaves. I don't necessarily know why the sensor did what it did (root cause), but at the very least I can fix my code to handle that situation better.
Could this be seen in the night sky? (Australian here) A mate sent a Snapchat last night of a line of lights in the night sky, I just said it was the normal line of starlink satellites
If you see a full line of lights in the sky that’s just a recent Starlink launch before they have spread out into their final orbital positions. Hence why it looks grouped together instead of the individual small dot you see when you spot a single satellite all on its own.
search for the phrase "starlink train". You will find as much information as you want. There are also prediction sites so you can know when/if you can see one.
Quite rare to see Starlink failure. I believe this specific satellite was launched on the 23rd of November with Group 11-30.
They have a lot of satellites, I guess that the more time it passes the more % of something going amiss will rise.
Yeah. The percentage will grow as the constellation gets larger and larger. Once they reach full operating capacity i assume that percentage will start to drop as they work out and fix any remaining bugs. Eventually leveling out with just day to day issues.
You’re describing the exact opposite of the bathtub curve. Why would failures as a proportion of the whole increase as time goes on?
They’re saying the total percent chance of something going wrong with ANY of the many satellites goes up with more satellites. Not the percent chance for any one vehicle.
He's not saying the bathtub curve is changing, he's saying the number of devices in the first tail of the bathtub curve is increasing.
Over time the amplitude of that tail will decrease with better manufacturing, even if the number of new devices stays constant.
Starlink satellites are deorbited before they would start experiencing deterioration. They are only meant to be up there about 5 years.
This creates a whole different problem, of course. So it is not exactly a defense of their business model, which I think is worrying for all sorts of reason. It just means that they are intentionally removed from use before it hits that tail.
I can assure you they will experience the bathtub curve. No one in their right mind will deorbit satellites during the steady plateau if they're trying to run a profit.
I assume you just have no idea what you are talking about then. There is a limited amount of propellent that they constantly use to keep the satellite working. They know when that tank is getting near empty, and they know that there will be a window where, if they do not do a maneuver to perform a controlled deorbit, they will be unable to do so ever again for that device.
So far, they're saying they are committed to intentionally removing devices at their end of life, which is when the propellant is nearing exhaustion, not when it is completely gone or when the device fails or hits the atmosphere.
They have yet to measure the length of the steady plateau. Also, propellant is a consumable, and you can only change the amount in future satellites.
Absolute failure will be approximately linear with constellation size, so as the constellation grows absolute failure rate will increase.
On a longer timescale, experience grows and with it, reliability on a per-vehicle basis goes up as failures (increasing with constellation size) become apparent and are resolved on future revisions.
They increase as the number of active satellites increases and then decrease as the tech and processes mature.
The bathtub curve is a different thing. It shows that you should expect a product to either fail early on or not for ages and that it shouldn’t fail randomly in the middle of its life.
I think you have this backward. The total number of failure (absolute) will increase, but the failures as a portion of the whole will decrease in a vacuum. Increased experience with creating them, absent endemic issues in production, would make them have a lower chance of failure, not higher.
But whenever you increase the amount of them, more will fail even with that lower chance of failure just because there are more opportunities.
Starlink intentionally deorbits older satellites early to prevent end of life failures, so absent external factors they almost certainly will not suddenly have a massive increase in failure as a portion of the whole.
That said: this is assuming no external problems. Because they are in a constant cycle of replacement, things like lowering production standards could have a negative effect if that were to occur. There also is the potential that over time increased space debris could affect the chances of failure from impacts.
Why though? I can understand the frequency of occurrence increasing with the number of units deployed, but I don't understand why the percentage of units failing would increase.
You have a clear misunderstanding of the bathtub curve and did not answer my question at all. I think you don’t even understand what I asked.
Dude's never owned a car before.
Even if they didn't ramp up the rate of satellite production, just keeping it constant, you would still expect to see an increasing rate in the total number of failures as the total number of active units increases. It's a consequence of the shape of the bathtub curve itself that this failure rate will continue until product lifecycles begin to overlapping. It's like trying to paint a solid line with a bathtub shaped stamp.
Man who knew how many satellite experts were out there
"Errors in a system will likely rise as the system continues to expand, and then lower as the teams working on it get more data on what needs to be fixed to reduce error rates."
Truly a hyper-specific and not-general-at-all prediction that only an expert in that specific field could say with any amount of confidence.
Also, it’s not as if an aerospace engineering degree is all that exclusive. Not to mention the mountain of systems engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, etc. that fill out the field.
Dude explains a bathtub curve and MTBF.
Reddit: experts everywhere!
At this point the main qualification is $200k cash for tuition or the same in debt. If I was on board for $75k+ in additional debt I'd be an aeronautical engineer by training and certification not a systems engineer in title only.
Or be like me, sell your soul to the navy for a few years, not actually get to use anything from my degree that has anything to do with space, and now bide my time in an unrelated field until I can go back and get a PhD because I still love the idea of learning it all. It’s zero debt, but I’m pretty sure my lifespan was shortened by a few years.
If I won the lottery I'd be back in school for the start of winter term.
I did the same, 6 years in the Navy. Got my masters in nuclear engineering and I have worked as a mechanical engineer for 12 years. Found out last year I have cancer in my late 30s, even the VA figures the Navy gave it to me, that 100% was the quickest easiest VA claim I've ever made.
This can be summarize as "mo' money, mo' problems"
It's just a the law of large numbers instance but with failure rates The larger your sample size the more likely it will represent whatever failure rate star link is publicly (or privately) is projecting, and that's ignoring that the older equipment gets the more prone to failure it (generally) is when it can't be maintained due to being in space. This is just statistics in action, it's not rocket science.
IDK why people are acting like this is unprecedented or crazy like we haven't had space shuttles blow up during launch because of confidence levels being too low on testing and analysis on a gasket.
Eh the concept behind orbits and decay is pretty simple, basically just understanding the relationship between altitude and atmosphere density. The rest is just a high-level recognition that engineering and manufacture can improve with experience and iteration.
You say that but tons of people commenting here have absolutely no idea how orbits work at the most basic level or that orbits decay.
Eh, the previous conversation above seems fine to me. What do you think is wrong with it?
It's not so much what was said as it is the confidence at which it was said.
What he said functionally has absolutely nothing to do with satellites
The percentage will grow as the constellation gets larger and larger.
Note sure if you're seen them, but there are satellite visualization tools available, I like https://satellitemap.space/ myself. These tools do highlight that there certainly are a lot of satellites in orbit!
As their number grows the probability of collision with orbital garbage and getting hit by micrometeorites and such o also expands.
"the more time it passes the more % of something going amiss will rise"
This shouldn't apply here, they all have very limited lifetime (before reentry)
You are forgetting the scientific laws of Enshitification: the longer a project persists, the more corners investors will cut.
Hey! SpaceX are engineers! They don't cut corners, they apply chamfers!
That's true, but isn't it kinda the point of Starlink? Lots of shitty sattelites that decay quickly
This would still apply here. I dont know exactly spacex's design criteria, but whatever statistical basis they are design to will be over that very limited life span.
Make enough parts and you will eventually get the one with -4 or -5 sigma material properties and it may fail prematurely
I am not saying that they are not degrading, lol. What I am saying is that they are designed for 5 years lifespan (with similar orbit decay) and first launch was like 6 years ago. There is no "piling up" because oldest sattelites should be already decaying in atmosphere.
It's very possible it's a micrometeoroid or small space debris. The more satellites you have in orbit, the more likely you are to see this happen.
As they are in a lower orbit their decay is expected. As it is expected I can imagine the engineers had a definite planned lifespan for them that is shorter than most. Shorter lifespan and a planned obsolescence/need to replace the expiring satellites leads to less important factor of safety?
It says satellite 35k-something, is that how many satellites they've launched??
Wonder if anything to do with that solar flare that just happened yesterday. At work we noticed a lot of glitches happening
Does this sound more like a system or equipment failure or more like a meteor strike. From the description it sounds to me like what would happen if you poked a hole in the thing.
Space debris is much more likely than meteors. The damage description sounds like it's compatible with both impact and internal failure. We would expect most impact events to happen with operational satellites because (a) there are more and (b) they are at higher altitude where there is more debris. But that doesn't mean you can't get unlucky with a new satellite at 418 km, of course.
Sounds like an internal problem. I don't think they have any collision avoidance features to update.
They actually do have a collision avoidance feature, but a tiny piece of debris may not be tracked so it doesnt necessarily help with that
Fair enough, just taking a guess at the internal/external problem question. It was the only reason I could come up with for a software update as a reaction to an external problem.
Yeah, and internal does still seem more likely. Just felt the need to point out that it could still be debris related
Sounds a lot like a strike with sudden venting.
That's what I was thinking. It would explain the trajectory anomaly too.
The venting would explain the trajectory anomaly.
Sounds more like aliens.
If something strange happens in space, it's usually aliens.
Get Avi Loeb on the phone!
He will say something like “there’s a 30% chance it’s aliens”, because he likes being in the news and selling books and can’t be proven wrong when it invariably isn’t.
Communications disruption can mean only one thing - invasion.
“Fuck this one starlink in particular”
-The aliens
Aliens are aliens and do weird alien shit that Man can not fathom.
No, there wouldn’t be traceable low relative velocity objects if it were a meteor strike.
It would be tons of fast moving objects with unknown trajectories.
I mean, those things aren't mutually exclusive. Any debris too small to track is exactly that - not tracked, so we don't know how much small, fast-moving debris might have been ejected from an impact, whereas the larger components that can be tracked necessarily have a lower change in velocity after the collision because they have higher inertia.
That depends heavily on the meteor size. Meteor frequency is inversely correlated with size, i.e. there's far more millimeter sized objects than centimetre sized objects, and much more of those than anything large.
Thus the chance of being hit by something small enough to poke a hole and knock off some pieces in the process is significantly larger than the chance to be hit by something that utterly obliterates it.
It could have punched a tiny little hole and released a bunch of pressure that blew a few parts off too. The debris may have nothing to do with an impact.
Could be if the strike caused an internal pressure tank to vent. And the venting blew parts off the satellite.
I immediate assumed Chinese exercise an anti-space weapon.
Wasn't there a complaint from SpaceX about a close call with a Chinese satellite a few days ago?
Yup
https://spacenews.com/spacex-claims-close-approach-to-starlink-satellite-by-payload-from-chinese-launch/
Why would the Chinese break the space warfare taboo and commit an act of war against the United States in order to destroy a Starlink satellite with no value?
Because it’s a starling satellite with no value. It does that they can do it, but I’d also something insignificant enough that they know we won’t respond. We might not even admit that it’s what happened publicly.
yeah it sounds like it got hit but they're talking about software solutions so maybe it blew up.
How small an object is trackable? As they said the debris was trackable. Could hint at what occurred. The tank was venting, so either it was struck or suffered an internal failure. Both of these would have resulted in debris.
Depending how accurately theyve been tracking it's path, should be able to know if it was struck first or not? Hopefully those things have accelerometer logs. But if they lost comms I don't know if it's sending that all the time or if it needs "logging into" to check such low level info.
"Fully Demise"
I like that phrasing.
How’s your uncle doing?
He fully demised.
There’s a big difference between mostly demised and fully demised.
Spafetey
I'm stealing that and won't be providing attribution.
(redditor awayyyyyy!)
wonder if something hit it? like a little meteorite or something? apparently space debris can travel at quite a high rate of speed when they get in orbit for some time..
Considering a propellant tank is leaking, I suspect it was a micrometeoroid or other space debit that could have impacted it.
Given that the propulsion tank was pierced and a bunch of pieces blew off the satellite, it probably got whacked by a micrometeoroid traveling at a high relative velocity. It’s a hazard they really can’t avoid.
Sounds like something on it exploded
Does it have to be “the” Space Force?
https://www.fastcompany.com/91419515/starlink-satellites-are-already-falling-and-it-will-only-get-worse
with all the crap up there, probably a strike
Was the satellite not in a circular orbit yet? Otherwise the "reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise within weeks" is doing some heavy lifting. At a 400km circular orbit "weeks" could be replaced with "many months"
It’s roughly circular, 418 x 429 km. The fact that it’s tumbling rather than in a low drag configuration should help it decay more quickly. I couldn’t find an independent estimate of decay time.
https://www.n2yo.org/satellite/?s=66629
Starlinks are relatively light and have for their weight a large surface area when out of control, wouldn't be surprised if they do have significant enough drag that it reenters within half a year to a year max so "many months" seems like a very pessimistic estimate.
Your orbit doesn't stay circular when you vent a pressurized vessel. Unless by some infinitesimal chance the venting was perfectly perpendicular to the orbital plane throughout the event to cause a change to inclination instead of a change to the orbital period.
"the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects". Is that a convoluted way of saying "It blowed up! It blowed up real good!"?
If the velocity is low relative to the satellite, it only blowed up a lil bit.
In my expert opinion, the front fell off.
Wasn't this built so the front wouldn't fall off?
I will note that's not typical behaviour.
There are very high standards for the material allowed in these types of things.
Let me guess. Card board is right out?
Let me guess. Cardboard's out? What about cardboard derivatives?
Not this particular satellite. But I can assure you, it's not a standard behaviour...
Literally outside of the environment this time.
Also the back. And sides.
We can control that with medication.
r/unexpectedfuturama I heard it in that voice...
Did you release a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects? You may be entitled to compensation
I did that today at work! Am I eligible for compensation???
Sounds like it got hit and torn up by a small object.
Hit a space squirrel or raccoon. It happens.
I choose to believe that you meant "space squirrels" and "raccoons" separately, as in either a space squirrel or a regular ol' non-wpace raccoon. Just a trash panda from the Midwest somehow finding his way in front of a speeding satellite. RIP little guy.
That is correct. Having found raccoons in a myriad of locations and situations, I've no doubt they've conquered low orbit as well.
I, for one, would welcome our Raccoon overlords.
I legitimately would be less surprised to see a report about a raccoon that found its way into or onto a spacecraft than I would be if I found out a human somehow made it.
Not all astronauts are racoons, but all racoons are astronauts.
Could be a space raccoon. They are related to normal raccoons.
It's more likely to be space raccoon as space is their natural habitat.
It's very unlikely to find normal raccoons in orbit.
Last seen with a walking tree
I must add that these were Earth racoons. There's no evidence that could point that it could be Lunar racoons or Saturnian ones.
I mean, they come out of nowhere then stop in their tracks!
Then it made a bunch of baby small objects.
If it was hit it was most likely hit by space debris on its whipple shield. The whipple shield is specifically designed to prevent a satellite blowing up real good in case of a hit. SpaceX stated it uses whipple shield in a filing with the FCC a few years ago.
I'm surprised though by "are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event." Space debris strikes are pretty rare events. There is no need to rush to deploy a software update. That makes me doubt it was a space debris hit.
Protections against an event don't have to mean protecting against it occurring. But instead can mean protections against the consequences of the event occurring.
For example, the house caught fire and burned down. The next house is being built with protections against fire.
That could mean protecting against the fire being able to start, protections against people becoming trapped, or protections against the fire spreading from one part to another.
They really didn't give any indication one way or another what happened. I think it's more likely an internal event but as outsiders we can't rule out external just yet.
Protections against losing comms is my thought. Or protection against not having any info after comms loss.
Eg perform a crash dump in the event X happens so we know wtf just happened.
Can't protect against debris with software, or a tank exploding and gutting the thing. But if it's got life for even seconds or fractions of a second even kB of info could be enough.
Yeah, wouldn't take many packets to just send the last 30 seconds of logs. The trick is making sure those packets make it somewhere. So if they can find a way to ensure they can either dump to ground or another satellite, that could help.
Yeah, there's no telling if their software update was to prevent whatever initiated the chain of events, something to stop the chain of events midway, or just better logging to understand what happened.
If it blowed up real good, they would be possibly untrackable, high velocity objects
Sudden partial disintegration.
u/3MyName20 I don't think nearly enough people have watched SCTV and that is the world's loss.
Doesn't necessarily mean it could've blown up. Something could've striked the satellite and caused debris to scatter everywhere.
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
I thought it had literally shit itself.
Excellent SCTV reference. Im both happy and sad I got that. I just hope thats what it was...
Should be read in John Candy’s voice.
Sounds more like a rapid unplanned disassembly than a mere anomaly, but to be expected now and then when you have that many launches.
Anomaly has a long history of being a catch-all for everything up to and including giant explosions.
Sure, it's not wrong or anything, but it seems like a bit of an understatement when discussing the total loss of a spacecraft. A glitch with one system seems like a better use of the word than "the spacecraft blew up into pieces and is now reentering the atmosphere."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4WHG_GgKdI
This is my favorite 'anomaly' example, that's the phrasing the announcer uses. As I said, it has a long use encompassing giant explosions and failures far bigger than the Starlink incident we're talking about. It's popular in part because it SOUNDS like no big deal, it SOUNDS cute and non-bombastic, but then... BOOM.
They say "anomaly" because it's a legally-defined word from FAA regulations.
14 CFR 401.7 states:
Compared to:
Today I learned, thank you! That's really interesting, I didn't know it was a term of art.
Does it? It's still in one piece and tumbling, sounds more like it got struck and something splintered off.
That could be it, or maybe a propellant tank exploded on its own. Sort of an Apollo 13 situation, although it was an oxygen tank in that case. Hard to say with what little we know.
That does sound a lot like a punctured tank which then vented out of the hole and caused the change in orbit.
Would a rupture from a manufacturing defect look different?
When I read the number I thought there are over 36k starlink satellites in space. Good thing Google scouter told me it is only over 9000 of them.
its over 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9000 so far. It will grow exponentially moving forward as other companies and countries launch their own.
I believe SpaceX wants to have around 25k starlink satellites in orbit at some point.
I dont think you know what exponentially means
Orbital congestion really seems like the kind of thing that shkuld be regulated and partitioned out the same way that wireless spectrum is regulated.
Unfortunately, especially in the current political climate, space cooperation is going down, not up. Freaking depressing, as I can't rule out it becoming a battlefield in the near future. We may not see troops up there, but it doesn't take much to knock things down from there anymore. Especially vulnerable low earth constellations.
Thanks, was wondering also. I knew they had a bunch, but not close to 36k.
10 years ago there were less than 350 artificial satellites in orbit
In 2015 there were ~1300 active satellites in orbit, and over 2700 more that were inactive.
https://www.pixalytics.com/sat-orbit-2015/
If you go by trackable objects in orbit, the count was over 15k in 2015:
https://sdup.esoc.esa.int/discosweb/statistics/static/allEvoTypeCnt.png
Chart from: https://sdup.esoc.esa.int/discosweb/statistics/
That's not even close, it was way more than that.
[EDIT: Around 4000 or so, operational]
I love making up facts that are not real, and then sharing them on the internet!! :D
Did you know that if you soak a raise in grape juice it'll turn back into a grape?!
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collision with space debris?
The advantage of Starlink is that at its low orbit, any debris will clean up within weeks. It will not bring about Kessler Syndrome as some commenters like to say each time there is a Starlink mishap.
Starlink satellites operate in a very low orbit, meaning they will all de-orbit in time. None of the starlink sats in space right now will be there in ~6 years. Starlink has to, and does, keep sending up more sats.
The fact this one failed and is only a few weeks from de-orbit means either 1) This sat was near the end of its lifetime anyway, or 2) The anomaly caused propulsion that decayed the orbit rapidly.
This one was at the start of it's lifetime, thus not 1), and it did not experience significant propulsion from the anomaly, thus not 2).
It is, in fact, 3) the sat was at the start of it's lifespan and was still climbing up to it's final orbit. The anomaly caused a *lack* of propulsion which leaves it at a low altitude and thus will experience fast decay.
Somebody found that it was sent up on Nov 23rd.
So it does exactly what it's designed to do, and doesn't contribute Kessler syndrome? You lied to me, reddit!
“Move fast and break things” hits different in orbit.
2 out of around 10000 starlink satellites have failed catastrophically, and its move fast and break things?
Satellites are quite literally moving fast. Things broke on this one. It’s a joke. Starship iterations are very similar to the “move fast and break things” attitude. I accept your rebuttal, and acknowledge that everything SpaceX puts into orbit appears to be really well engineered, at least to a spectator like me.
Edit to add: rocket boosters landing on drone ships still feels like science fiction to me, and I still get excited when I think about how it’s basically how things work now.
Oh, you were doing a funny! That’s a great comment for your comeback by acknowledging their actual engineering efforts
Oh my god that flew over my head (quite literally too)
Instead of “live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse…”
Move fast, explode prematurely, and burn up on reentry.
Sounds like a bumper sticker below a flaming satellite screaming towards earth
An anomaly? In space?? Have they considered using a modified tachyon pulse?
They did, but then it disrupted our past near France and stopped life from forming.
Ahh damnit. That always happens to me. Alright going back in time real quick brb
All it takes is one stray micro meteor to blast a hole through it
Might it have collided with an object of unknown origin that was cherry red in color with what looks like four wheels?
That is currently 2 AU away.
I actually really wish we could retrieve that car, simply because I am incredibly curious what the materials look like. How does a standard car interior hold up to space for 7 years?
If I had to guess, incredibly poorly. I doubt it would be possible to even recover it without it breaking up. And by it I mean the whole car. Deep space is an extremely hostile environment.
see, these are my thoughts as well. Especially the materials that make up things like the dashboard. Offgassing and unshielded UV may have broken it down entirely. I wonder if there is some way we could reconnect to the cameras on board when it gets close enough next time.
Every chip in there is certainly fried. I wouldn't be surprised it the metal has been doing some chemistry up there too.
for sure. I wonder how the carbon fiber has held up, and especially the aluminum bonds in the chassis
I just wish somebody had stashed a teapot in the glove compartment.
For those who aren't fans of x:
https://xcancel.com/Starlink/status/2001691802911289712
On December 17, I—Cell 35956—experienced an anomalous internal misunderstanding. While minding my own business at a healthy 1.2 cm below the surface of the skin, I initiated an unscheduled growth initiative that resulted in a brief loss of centralized coordination. Some nutrients vented. Boundaries blurred. Growth accelerated.
This produced a modest reconfiguration of my semi-major axis (about 6 cm—totally normal when you’re expanding aggressively) and the gentle budding of a few low-velocity offspring. They’re small. Trackable.
I’m pleased to report I remain mostly intact, albeit tumbling—an expected side effect of unchecked proliferation.
Importantly, my trajectory keeps me beneath the vital organs, posing no risk to the brainstem or its inhabitants. I’m a rebel, not a monster. (I am not responsible for my offspring though lol)
As part of the body’s largest cellular collective, I want to stress how committed we are to overall health. We take anomalies like me very seriously—especially once they’re noticed. The organism’s immune engineers are already racing to identify my root cause and deploying new signaling protocols designed to make future spontaneous ambition less likely.
Fantastic. Is this an original composition?
The tone of the starlink memo reminded me of an onion arricle about a thorn from a plant trying to spread its seed and take over the world, and cancer. I told ChatGPT to rewrite it in that satirical tone and framing then I fixed the parts ChatGPT didn't including the scales (it kept km instead of cm) it also tried to act like the cancer was more aligned than it is so I removed those bits and added my own.
And don't forget that something really small like a screw can cause lots of damage in space with high velocity...
Follow it here.
I have been hearing about Starlink for awhile now but I don't know a single person who's has it. What is supposed to be the point of it?
Can someone explain this to me? My interpretation of this is that they are both still trying to figure out what went wrong and they are pushing a software update to fix the problem. That is obviously incongruous.
In software I've worked on in the past, I've had cases where for example something gets an unexpected input from a sensor and then misbehaves. I don't necessarily know why the sensor did what it did (root cause), but at the very least I can fix my code to handle that situation better.
Im still just waiting for the first collision and everything after that will be history.
Your wait is over:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/s/pTNopQdi9p
Since 2009
Speaking from experience, it is no fun to lose a satellite like that.
Not so bad if it is one of many thousands. They don't go through as thorough testing as a one off sat.
Could this be seen in the night sky? (Australian here) A mate sent a Snapchat last night of a line of lights in the night sky, I just said it was the normal line of starlink satellites
But could it of possibly been this?
If you see a full line of lights in the sky that’s just a recent Starlink launch before they have spread out into their final orbital positions. Hence why it looks grouped together instead of the individual small dot you see when you spot a single satellite all on its own.
Thanks!
I've seen them before while out shooting the Milky way, but have never seen it like this before. Good to know
search for the phrase "starlink train". You will find as much information as you want. There are also prediction sites so you can know when/if you can see one.